I very, very rarely talk to people about religion to be honest. It's because 1) I consider it a very private matter (bit French perhaps) and don't like being intrusive with friends and family and 2) I worry if I did get into a deep and meaningful theological debate with anyone I'd collapse like a ton of bricks.

but religeon is often very much not a private matter as it seems to concern the alignment or non alignment of inner beliefs or feelings with something that is sort of communal or affecting many in a group, since we have an obligation to all humans and their feelings (communally) (the obligation coming from our natural animal empathy (If we have any) ) we could be said to have a public duty to comment on something that is communal (religeon) and its dogmas if they hurt or oppress another human.

The challange is for us to comment or try to correct religeons dogma or pronouncements or opinions, without insulting the inner inate beliefs or feelings of individuals........this is very tricky as humans within religeon can be conditioned to take in communal dogma and then channel and reinforce their own inner child feelings through the filter of dogma and communal concepts......this of course has taken place over the time of peoples lives and is therefore more of an empathic art rather than a science.

One should therefore not stick to a rigid defence of your own position, one should be fluid, yet enduring, like a grass stalk in a high wind (bit of daoist buddisty allagory there)

I was at my mum's for tea and talking about the Commonwealth Games. There was an English guy in a 100m heat called Richard Kilty in the heats, which my mum found hilarious "as it sounded like Patrick Kielty." Without looking at the TV, I said "He doesn't look much like him." The reason being from the sprints I've watched in my lifetime I expected him 9 times out of 10 to be b......................................................

is that he couldn't just say black and isntead went with " b.....", as if it's a shameful word. I think that says much more about his prejudices than the fact that he jumped to a conclusion about the race of a world-class sprinter.

a certain sporting event would be dominated by people of a certain race. But the vast majority of sprinters in my lifetime HAVE been black. I wasn't saying anything bad as in a race-based assumption that only x ethnicity was capable of competing in y event or possessing y type of sporting skill, i.e. the "there's not many black swimmers as they can't float well" theory (correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Ian Wright and Mark Bright leave Crystal Palace about 20 years ago as the chairman said something in a football context like that?)